Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

My intention, as is normal practice, is to answer the questions that I took on notice yesterday at the end of question time today, which is what many ministers on your side of the chamber have done.

The answer is that my announcement was that our new funding, funding that your government, when you were in power, did not commit and did not implement, will deliver 18 new biosecurity officers. They are currently being recruited, and, in the meantime, we have employed 65 contractors and 10 other officers. Again, I make the point that every action we have taken—sanitation foot mats, biosecurity response zones, extra biosecurity officers—were never taken by your government when this outbreak got to Indonesia. All you did was send tweets.